invisible landscapes

Longyearbyen 2017 acrylic and graphite on Yupo 23" x 38"

invisible landscapes

Alice Austin and Andrea Krupp at ArtSpace 1241, June 3-24, 2017

It's my good fortune to be a friend of Alice Austin.

Offered a last-minute exhibit opportunity at ArtSpace 1241, she agreed to do it, and then she asked me to join her. We put our heads together and selected from various series of works in progress, looking for commonality, contrast and compliment. Alice's unique vision of landscape and my own testify about our personal experiences of place and nature. They intersect in unexpected ways. I am happy for this chance to show my new artist's book along with other drawings on Yupo from the "Northland Webcam" series. See a few more below.

Colophon: I constructed this image from webcam observations of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic circle. The transmissions travel a vast distance through space, through my computer screen and into my eye. I see the deepening Arctic twilight and I believe the mountains exist. Even though I no longer see the mountains in this moment, I know they are there.

This QR code will link your eye to the Longyearbyen webcam.

*The two extra zeros are meant to help the viewer recalibrate their sense of place within the geologic timescale. This application of the year format is attributed to smudge studio. Learn more about their work at smudgestudio.org.

Art has an important role to play in this process: to convey difficult and abstract concepts, not in a direct or didactic way, but through emotion and nuance; to create new ways of engaging with the rich complexities of existence. Art brings the conceptual and the abstract to ground level where they can be seen and considered by us.